I am content for the process of discovery to stretch out for years but every now and then I trip over something important. One idea that I had been roughing out over the years was the relationship between Ushak Medallion Carpet and the Persianate floral form field decorations. I was standing in front of Ushak Medallion Carpet at Jim Dixon's when I finally put it together. We can come up with a very accurate relative dating system. Put simply the key is the minor field floral forms. The closer they are to the flowers of Persian art in the 1540s the older they are. To me it indicates that these are copied from Persian Art. Walter Denny suggests that there is a transitory tile phase where carpets are always copied from tile nd never from paper.

Large medallion Oushak rugs constitute one of the best-known and most handsome groups of Ottoman carpets, and testimony to the success of the design is the fact that it remained in favour from the second half of the fifteenth century until at least the late 18th century. As in so many areas of the decorative arts, however, it is the earlier examples of the group which are the most visually successful, in terms of their overall composition, the rendition of the design, and their use and range of colour.

There is little doubt that this magnificent carpet fragment represents an early example within the group, dating from the early 16th Century, and comparable to other more well known blue ground medallion Ushak carpets such as those in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Madrid, the al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait and a fragment in the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin. All of these related early examples are dated to this period based on parallels in other areas of Islamic art. As Julian Raby argued at the 4th International Conference on Oriental Carpets, held in London in 1983, the design cartoons for the earliest large-medallion Ushak carpets were probably inspired by the blind-tooled medallions from the outer covers of Ottoman manuscripts dating from the 1460s. These medallions closely match those of such carpets from this group, especially in the drawing of their scrolling and interlocking vegetal forms. In the present lot these motifs are particularly delicate and beautiful. In his article in Hali 116 (May-June 2001), Carlo Suriano further explores the parallels between manuscript covers and Ushak medallions, pointing to the influence of Turkmen artists from Tabriz, who were moved to Istanbul by Mehmed II Fatih in 1473. The influence of these scribes on the bindings of royal manuscripts can be seen in the new rhomboid shapes of the pendants flanking the medallions, a style replicated in the design of the pendants flanking the medallion in the Sylvester fragment, and the other early carpets of this group.

It is not surprising that for the last three decades this carpet has occupied a prominent position in David Sylvester's homes. The carpet was acquired from the Parisian art dealer, Samuel Tarica. At least one other great early medallion Ushak carpet passed through Tarica's hands: the Czartoryski-Altunian Ushak on a red ground with a 'Kufic' border, now in the Wher collection in Switzerland.

This splendid Kazak belongs to a select sub-group of 19th century rugs featuring distinctive ivory stepped reserves enclosing charming animals and birds, supported by two rows of polychrome Memling guls. Other examples include one previously in the Yohe Collection,

All related rugs share the same red ground 'S' gul motif borders whereas this example displays a polychrome hooked shield palmette border often associated with Karachopt rugs such as Sotheby's, New York, 27 April 2000, lot 52, also from the Rudnick Collection and illustrated in Bailey & Hopkins (op. cit.), no. 18.

The inscribed date on the present lot is usually interpreted as reading 1249 A.H. (1833 A.D). See: Hali, Issue 69, pp. 147-8 for a full discussion of the classification of this rare group of rugs.

Ushak Saf fragment, West Anatolia, ca. 1820. Given the image the warps run horizontally. On the bottom bits of the lower selvage have survived. On the left probably only the border is missing. On the right and on the top much more may be missing. It appear

Lorenzo Lotto, in his 1542 painting of St. Anthony for the church of S. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice (See above), depicted a rug almost identical to that offered here. See Coletti, Luigi, Lotto, Bergamo, 1953, fig. 189 for an illustration of the entire picture, or Mills, John, "'Lotto' Carpets in Western Paintings," Hali, vol.3, no. 4, fig. 11 for a detail showing the 'Lotto' rug. For years referred to as 'arabesque' rugs, then 'Holbein' rugs with which they differed in field pattern but shared border designs, in the 1950s they became known as "Lotto" rugs. This was due to their appearance in a number of western artists' works and in particular Lotto, with probably the best known being the Family Group, painted in 1547 and now in The National Gallery, London, see Mills, John, op.cit., pl. 12, p. 280. The earliest Western depiction of a "Lotto" rug is in the 1516 work of Sebastiano del Piombo, Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., for a detail, see Mills, ibid, fig. 1. In order for these Eastern rugs to be included in Western paintings, their production in Turkey most likely began in the 15th century. For a thorough discussion of the history of early Turkish carpets see Franses, Michael and Pinner, Robert, "Turkish Carpets in the Victoria and Albert Museum: The 'Classical' Carpets of the 15th to 17th Centuries," Hali, v. 6, no. 4, pp. 357-381.

The "Lotto" group of carpets have field designs of three varying types, classified by Charles Grant Ellis as 'Anatolian', 'Ornamented' and 'Kilim,' see Ellis, C. G., "The 'Lotto' Pattern as a Fashion in Carpets," Festschrift fur Peter Wilhelm Meister, Hamburg, 1975. The present rug has an 'Anatolian' field pattern that is enclosed by a Kufesque border. Here, the Kufesque border is open to the outside of the rug, as found in the earliest depiction of a "Lotto" rug, the Sebastiano del Piombo work cited, as well as in the Lotto painting of St Anthony previously mentioned. "Lotto" rugs with the Kufesque border are generally accepted by scholars as being the earliest of the group as they appear in the earliest paintings. There are around 14 "Lotto" rugs extant that feature an 'Anatolian' field and open Kufesque border as in the lot offered here, with examples in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Please see a listing of published examples below and Eskenazi, John, Il tappeto orientale dal XV al XVIII secolo, London, 1981, p. 54, footnote 12 for a listing of similar rugs and fragments known to date.

While all of the rugs cited and the present rug share field and major border designs, there are differences in the flanking guard borders and color of the major border. Here, a light blue inner border with a red and yellow ribbon, and a wider red outer border enclosing an unusually spacious meander vine punctuated by flowerheads flank the blue-green open Kufesque border. This appears to be the only rug example with this combination of borders and it is precisely this configuration of borders that are depicted in Lotto's painting of St Anthony.